(The title is a reference to a Futurama episode. So there.)

A few years ago, I created this. It’s an online SyFy original movie generator. It’s eleven years old, but still relevant, since those movies are still pretty awful. Of course, they don’t have to be good; they only have to make back more in advertising revenue than their budgets, which often run into the tens of dollars. I should probably update the code to make it more interactive, I suppose, but I think it stands well as it is.

Now, last night Jennifer and I watched a Netflix original movie called A Christmas Prince. It was… an experience. Well, okay, it was stupid. It was a bad film. Just as a bad SyFy film can be full of tropes and cliches, so can a bad romance. And this one ticked all the boxes: the plucky heroine who doesn’t know how beautiful she is; the stupidly handsome reluctant prince; the mischievous young girl. Etc. The dialogue was awful. With one exception (the editor), the acting wasn’t horrible, because Rose McIver (who also plays Olivia in iZombie) is pretty good. But on the whole, this is a bad movie.

So Jennifer suggested, “Why don’t you create an online romance film plot generator? Just like your SyFy movie generator?” This strikes me as a pretty good idea, except that I’d have to watch a lot of these bad romance films and take notes just to make sure I know what tropes and cliches are abused in these films, and I am not willing to do that. I suspect I’d need an insulin shot afterwards.

So I turn to you, my plucky readers. What elements should I include in my online romance plot generator? What types of characters? Situations? Plots? Give ’em to me. So I don’t have to watch them myself.

Note: I don’t mean to devalue the romance genre as a whole. I know that there are good quality romance novels and movies out there. I just haven’t read them or seen them, and that’s only because I don’t seek them out because it’s not a genre I’m particularly interested in. But just as my SyFy movie generator is not meant to devalue science fiction as a whole, so my romance movie generator won’t either.

Hm, now I’m thinking I ought to create a horror movie generator as well.

Ho ho holidailies!